Hope
 

Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all. ---Emily Dickinson


Sometimes we know hope as much by its absence as by its
presence. When we're depressed, hope seems almost
unknowable, a total illusion. We feel inwardly flattened,
unable to move, or as if we are just going through the
motions. The song of hope of which the poet speaks is
muted. Yet the will of the spirit, as well as of the body, is for life,
even for zestful life. Then something happens - a friend calls and
we mobilize ourselves, making an effort to be useful, to ourselves or
to someone else. The energy quickens. At least the moment
has some meaning again and that persistent note of hope,
without which we cannot live, starts thrumming in our minds once more.


Sometimes, all I can hope for is that I'll feel more hopeful tomorrow.

***********

Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman

I'm glad you started this thread Alffe, because it has been very much on my mind: :hug:

"Love, in all its manifestations, is an eternally popular theme, featured more often than hope. In truth, however, we might want to stress hope even more than love, for it is hope that energizes love, hope that lends love its spirit, hope that transforms despair into healing. As much as love, if not more than love, hope is the emotion that brings forth motion. It is the balm of wellness dispatched on angels' wings."

Out of, "Secrets From The Lost Bible" by Kenneth Hanson, PH.D.

hope...
 

What a great thread. I have been thinking about hope a lot of late. When we thought for sure Mom was not going to make it the night,,,, when they told us she might not make it the week... etc etc... I never gave up hope. People all around me where fatalistic, but I refused to give up hope. More important, I let her see my hope.

I believe, hope is something you must strive for and work towards. Hope alone, is not what made my Mom survive when many thought she had no chance, but it surly didn't hurt! Hope is contagious... she saw mine and it gave her some. I know it gave her strength, you could see the effect.

Life is a war. You can fight or surrender. I believe hope plays a large part in your choice. Me, I will never surrender. I crash and burn, I fall apart... but I will never give up. I will fight until I just know I have nothing left, and then I will dig deeper to find more strength. Right now, I am in many battles - I am battered and scarred to my core.... but I will find a way to pick myself up and march on.

Never give up my friends :grouphug:
http://i330.photobucket.com/albums/l...eworldsays.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Mfl...eature=related

Nikki, we will pick you up and march with you. :grouphug:

I refuse to give up hope that I will have more hope :o

How is it that one can feel joy and love, and then despair all at the same time????? Its confusing. But, somewhere there is a steadfastness that can be held on to. :grouphug:

if you take away the "H" in hope and replace the "O" with an "A"

you get....http://worldofliz.files.wordpress.co.../small-ape.jpg

and we need a lot of those also.... :p

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

but seriously, the great ape of hope is something that no one can afford to give up....without hope, there's just be a lot of apes and that'll just be a lot of none sense...

you all give me hope everytime I come here...thank you....

think we can strike it rich by making hope on a rope on a soap?? Maybe CTena will make us a photo of it. ;)

bump because you never can have enough of hope. :grouphug:

Finding an Anchor for the Storms of Life

The old sailor looked at the skies and saw a dark storm coming. As the sea became rough and choppy, the old salt calmly lowered the heavy-chained anchor link by link, battened down the hatches and went to bed for the night.

He knew the storm would be rough. But he had faith in the grasp of the anchor. He knew his boat would be there in the morning.

Like that sailor, we have an "anchor" for our lives that can help us stand fast through the storms of life. It's called hope.

(found on cbn.com)

I did a devotion on hope last week. This was the introduction to it...

"HOLD ON"

There have been times in my life when all seemed lost.
Life just wasn't worth living through another day.
Then you need to remember things that are important to you.

For as low as we fall there is always something or someone, somehwere
to help pull you back from the deep pits of darkness.
Once you feel yourself slipping grab onto that something or someone.

We wonder why life has given us such a bad deal. That is not the question.
Love, Hope, and Faith will guide us.
Look around and find the things you need to live for.
If we look hard enough, we will find the place we need to be.

Hold on for your loved ones, hold on for yourself.
God will take you when He needs you.
Until then make the most of what you have.
Give the most that you can, love the best that you can, and never lose hope.

Each morning you wake up, Thank God you are still alive,
to live another day to find your way.
Life is truly worth living for, if you look.
Find that place you need to be and just hold on.

Author Unknown

"What is the glimmer of hope that insists on being present to us in our darkness? Is it the lingering spirit of our loved one saying, "I'm all right, don't worry? Is it our own intuition that there is more to life - and death - than we can possibly understand, that death is not a stopping place but a gate to pass through?

Or is it the unquenchable nature of life, bubbling up, blossoming, singing even in dark hours?

A friend whose son had died tells me of how, in a woodsy glade, a bird previously unknown to that region perched on a high limb in a shaft of light, and sang. And sang. She said that while she continued to have times of great loneliness, never again did she question her son's continuing love and presence, or that ultimately she would be reunited with him."

Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman

******************

Reading this meditation this morning I am reminded of standing at the rail of our cruise ship in the middle of the ocean..probably three years after our Michael suicided and we were away, trying to avoid that anniversary date...when right before my eyes..a huge whale breached unexpectedly into the air and disappeared just as quickly into the water.

I knew it was Michael..."speaking" to me. :Heart:

((Alffe)) Such a beautiful thought :hug: Thank you for sharing it with us.

Aw.... Very touching thread.

Im about to cry...

Thanks.

Not sure you can make out the words in the top right hand corner...

Hope... It bends, it twists, it sometimes hides, but rarely does it break.
It sustains us when nothing else can.

HOPE!!! How to retrieve it when all seems lost. Notice, I used the word 'seems' because that is the way it is. It only seems sometimes like there is no hope, when really there is. We have to go looking for it, and that requires action. Where to find it, when we lose it? In the eyes of another. In the sun, the moon, and the rain. In the wind as it blows through the trees. In the flowers that bloom or, are yet, to bloom. In the passing clouds. In holding the door open for someone. In holding a hand. In holding a baby, or helping and watching someone grow, and smile. In smiling at a lonely person. In knowing that we BELONG here and have something, no matter how small it may seem, to contribute. Just my random thoughts.....:eek: :grouphug:

I asked "Bearygoodie" if I could borrow this from her post. She gave me her blessings...

I am off for the weekend, I HOPE you all keep up the HOPE as you've all have given me HOPE time and time again.

((((:grouphug:))))

"Let's go do the HOPE, oh baby... :) "

If you - symbolically speaking - get

thrown into a tumbler (like a stone) -

it depends fully on yourself if you get

crushed or if you come out of it a

polished, sparkling diamond.


-Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
On Life After Death

Hope.

Hope?

It's within you. I found it, so I figure you can find it too, although it might take time and assistance.

"Hope" seems to mean many different things to different people.

Hope to me is really vivid.

I was 4 years old when I found what hope is...

I'm sort of glad I found it when I did although it's changed my life so very much. Hope kept me alive. The flowers in the garden kept me alive since I was 4 years old. I go look out there in the light every single day of my life and I see...

Life.

I LIVE.

One of the things that is so hard about recovering from grief is that it Takes So Long. And we get discouraged, not only from the continuing presence of the grief, but because of our own inability to handle it better. Just when we think we are making progress - wham, it sweeps over us and seems new again.

Nowhere more than here is it important to be patient with ourselves, not let ourselves be weighed down by the discouragement of yesterday. Every day is a new day, a fresh beginning.


Healing After Loss Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief.

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

There was a wonderful article in todays paper about an autistic daughter and her mothers determination that she would have a life and would be fulfilled. She's written a book..A Thorn in my Pocket. I loved what she said about hope.

"Never give up hope. Hope is different than control. It's not Hallmark cards - oh, it's all going to be all right - it's really a bet. You check out the odds, and you place your bet. That's how I describe hope."

Eustacia Cutler is the author and mother of Temple Grandin who has a master's degree from Arizona State and a doctorate for University of Ill.

Never give up hope! :grouphug:

Hope...
 

HOPE is often confused with optimism.... things don't always turn out OK...
but HOPE sees ALL...
the failures and potentials...
Possibilities.......


Hope was topic of PBS show-- the New Medicine....
the role HOPE played in Health, Healing...
even in crises situations...
how Hope was 'used' in medical scenarios, situations...
how powerful HOPE can be, IS...

HOPE... :grouphug:

((Alffe)) ((Pono))

I keep thinking of the perfect storm analogy. You know there are many storms in this life we just can't weather. I know I can't. Hope is the life preserver we need to hold onto. At times it gets lost in the cold relentless water.. but it is always there, within our reach, we only need to try to find it.

I wish, Dad had tried harder. I wish, when he couldn't hold on any longer, he had given me the chance, the honor, to hold on for him. :(

That can be the hardest thing to do sometimes, unfortunately....:o :grouphug:

Bump...because....:grouphug:

Hope
 

(((Alffe)))) thanks for BUMP-- resurrecting this HOPE thread
because......:grouphug:

A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
~ Epictetus

Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what is still possible for you to do.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, Adorns and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray.
~ Oliver Goldsmith

"The ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own. This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness."

President Obama, speaking at Notre Dame commencement.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archive...age-at-a-time/

I really need to make a habit of reading at Psych. Central more often.
Thanks Doc.

This is the above link....
 

http://psychcentral.com/blog/wp-cont...dthisfirst.gifAt the International Conference on the Use of the Internet in Mental Health in Montreal earlier this month, I discussed how far we’ve come in 15 years of mental health online. But for all my discussion about social networking websites like PatientsLikeMe.com and Twitter, one of the slides sticks with me.
It’s the slide on “Suicide… Read this first,” a single, static webpage that’s been online since 1995 and written by Martha Ainsworth. Its purpose is singular yet deceptively simple — help people understand their thoughts and feelings about wanting to commit suicide, and hope they take enough away from it to make the choice to live another day. It has been read by nearly 8 million people during that time.
Yes, that’s right — 8 million people have read a single page about suicide. To put that into some perspective, just last November (2008), SAMHSA announced it had answered the 1 millionth phone call to its The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline network since the hotline was launched on Jan. 1, 2005.
When Psych Central started hosting the service a few years ago, we added a one-question survey at the end of the page to gauge how “effective” the page was in helping people with their suicidal thoughts. It’s one thing to note how many people have read a page, but it’s another to say whether it’s an effective intervention that actually prevents suicide.

Can a single, very unsexy Web 1.0 static web page be effective in helping people change their minds about suicide?

• 29% - Yes, this helped me
• 24% - No, this did not help me
• 31% - Still not sure
• 14% - N/A

So for 29 percent of the people, a single web page has changed their mind about suicide. We don’t, however, know how long-lasting the intervention is (it could be that 2 days later, a person changes their mind back).
For 24 percent of people who’ve taken the survey, the page has not helped. And 31 percent of people are still not sure which way they’re going to go. That’s 55 percent of visitors to the page who either are still thinking of committing suicide, or are not sure if they’re going to, so a lot more work still needs to be done.
However, extrapolating the numbers out, that one web page has potentially helped 2,320,000 people choose not to commit suicide. That’s more than double the number of suicides prevented by the vast resources of the U.S. federal government.
All by one person and one page.
So I’m all for the Web 2.0 / Health 2.0 / Twitterverse / Facebook networks and websites helping people. But in terms of mass (as in “population wide”) mental health prevention, you can’t beat something as simple as a well-written webpage.
People sometimes ask me “Why do you do this?” This is why.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central and has been writing about mental health and psychology issues online since 1992.

Just when I think I don't have a single tear left in me.....

“Suicide is not chosen; it happens
when pain exceeds
resources for coping with pain.”

.........

3. "People often turn to suicide because they are seeking relief from pain. Remember that relief is a feeling. And you have to be alive to feel it. You will not feel the relief you so desperately seek, if you are dead."




:Sob:

((Alffe)) thank you for sharing the link:hug: The page was simple.. yet says it all....

"I suspect that a large part of the energy we spend in pondering the various possible scenarios of life after death is just the energy of grief needing a place to go. But since we are given to speculating - and since there is a persistent conviction found in many religions that there is life beyond human death - perhaps we could throw our hats into the ring of hope, and surmise that while we don't know what God is doing in creation, God knows, and will see us through."

Healing After Loss by Martha Whitmore Hickman

:grouphug:

Thanks to ((Alffe)) :hug: I also read Healing After Loss almost daily. Sometimes when I know I am to face a particularly hard day, I might skip ahead to that days meditations.

This week is a hard one for me. June 5th is my wedding anniversary. God I miss the man Alzheimer's has stolen :(. June 6th is the anniversary of when I lost my baby :Sob: and June 7th... we buried Dad last year. Coupled with still reeling from Memorial Day, and Father's Day around the corner, I admit.. I'm a mess. But, I have learned it is ok to get lost on this road to healing. What is vital, is that I keep trying. That we all just keep trying! :hug: :hug:

Meditation for June 5th:

Lying awake at dawn, I remember them
With a love that is almost joy I remember them:
Lost, and all mine, all mine, forever.
~John Hail Wheelock

"It is a bittersweet joy, but real nonetheless-the way our lost loves are forever in our hearts and minds. They are, in fact, constant to our consciousness in a way they couldn't be when they were alive, because then we depended on their comings and goings-the highs and lows of their being with us, the vagaries of presence and convenience.

But now we can summon the memories of them at will and even when we’re not consciously thinking of them, they seem almost integral to our being as our skin or as a comfortable robe we wrap ourselves in at the end of a busy and tiring day. A loved one- a memory to be with, a quiet companion.

It is, again, not what we would have chosen. But it is its own blessing."

***********
June 6th

Learning to trust will be for all of us the means by which
the root system grows firm and nourishes the tree of life.
~Elaine M Prevallet

" All winter, in many parts of the country, the earth has lain brown and barren-or covered with chilling snow. But beneath that apparently lifeless earth the roots of plants have maintained themselves in a necessary hibernation. Then comes spring, year after year, the earth comes to life again, and blooms with beauty and nutrurance.

Maybe this can be a model of trust for us in these new-green months of early summer-that the season of depression and sorrow will, in time, give way to a renewed love of life and appreciation for its gifts. Including the gift of life and the legacy of the one we have loved."

***********

June 7th

We cannot re-create this world...We cannot even, truly, re-create ourselves.
Only our behavior can we re-create, or create anew. ~ Alice Walker

"How can we move ourselves out of the valley of despondency into which grief is apt to plunge us?

Not by changing the fact of loss. We know better than to hope for that. Not by some sweeping act of will that shifts our spirit from sadness into acceptance and eagerness to live again. We may have tried that but it doesn't work: at best , we achieve a momentary change of heart, but it will not last.

There is a classic line of thought in Christian spirituality that says the way to test the validity of faith is to act as though it is true, and see what happens.

In the same way, we can begin to act as though we have an investment in the future, as though we are rejoining our life's activities, and re-enjoying our life-our friends, our gardens, our music, our work-
and see what happens."

******************

Oh Nikki....just draw a line through the month of June. :( Would that you could! One more thing to have to grit your teeth and survive.:hug:
I can understand not wanting to...:grouphug:

Would that I could.....

((Alffe)):hug:

Hope.

I just wrote it yet again in a message. I realize I use that word a lot.
I decided to run a search in the forum here to see how many posts had the word hope in them. There's 20 full pages of threads/post in SOS with HOPE. I'm obviously not the only one who uses that word a lot. ;)

____


(((thinking of you Nikki)))

Hope..........

I am learning so much about hope. Tragedy and heartache will happen to each and every one of us. How we come out "on the other side", is up to us, and us alone.

There have been times when I just couldn't "keep on swimming"... those were the times I grabbed onto the nearest "rope", (my family, my friends, my SOS family) and held on for dear life.

Most recently, I couldn't find a rope no matter how hard I tried to find one. I discovered, these are the times you have "no choice" but to "let go, let God" ((Alffe))

But more, these are the times when you must entwine all that you have left, to make your own "rope". As important as hope is, it is useless without the want, desire and drive, to reach for it.

We are here for you dear Nikki...you just need to hollar. :grouphug:

This seems like a good morning for some more Hope. :grouphug: